0870 - The Fourth Constantinople Council closed, under Pope Adrian II in the West and Emperor Basil I in the East. The council had condemned iconoclasm, and became the last ecumenical council held in the Eastern Mediterranean area.

1900 - General Sir Redvers Henry Buller's troops relieve British forces at Ladysmith – they have been under siege by the Boers since 2 November 1899.

1900 - Wolfram Hirth was born (d. 1959). German pilot and designer of aircrafts.

1901 - Linus Pauling was born in Portland, Oregon. American chemist who applied quantum mechanics to the study of molecular structures, particularly in connection with chemical bonding The only winner of Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1954 and Peace 1962 (d. 1994) .

1911 - Denis Parsons Burkitt was born (d. died 23 Mar 1993). British surgeon and medical researcher. In the late 1950s, Burkitt began studying a form of lymphoma that affected children in his part of Africa (Burkitt's lymphoma).

1915 - Zero Mostel was born (d. 1977 ). American actor ( Fiddler on the Roof).

1915 - Sir Peter Medawar was born (d. 2 Oct 1987) . British zoologist who received (with Sir Macfarlane Burnet) the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1960 for the discovery of acquired immunological tolerance when he found (1953) that adult animals injected with foreign cells early in life accept skin grafts from the original cell donor.

1916 - Audley Bowdler Williamson was born (d. 21 Nov 2004). British inventor and manufacturer of skin-care products who invented Swarfega hand cleaner, a green jelly that mechanics, printers and others use to wash grease, grime, and ink from their hands.

1929 - Frank O. Gehry was born in Toronto. Canadian-American architect and designer, renowned worldwide for his original, sculptural, and often audacious work, including the curvaceous Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain.

1929 - Baron Clemens von Pirquet dies (b. 12 May 1874). Austrian physician who originated a skin test for tuberculosis that bears his name, a classic diagnostic test in which tuberculin is applied to a superficial abrasion of the skin of the arm.

1930 - Leon Neil Cooper was born. American physicist and winner of the 1972 Nobel Prize for Physics with John Bardeen and John Robert Schrieffer, for his role in developing the BCS (for their initials) theory of superconductivity.

1939 - Daniel C. Tsui was born. Chinese-born American physicist who (with Horst L. Störmer and Robert B. Laughlin) received the 1998 Nobel Prize for Physics for the discovery and explanation that the electrons in a powerful magnetic field at very low temperatures can form a quantum fluid whose particles have fractional electric charges (fractional quantum).

1948 - Steven Chu,Steven Chu was born. American physicist who (with Claude Cohen-Tannoudji and William D. Phillips) was awarded the 1997 Nobel Prize for Physics for their independent, pioneering research in cooling and trapping atoms using laser light.

1948 - Bud Gartiser sets a new world record after clearing the 50-yard low hurdles in 6.8 seconds.

1995 - UN peacekeeping forces, mainly Bangladeshis and Pakistanis, are withdraw from Somalia ending international involvement in the country.

1995 - Raul Salinas de Gortari was arrested for masterminding the murder of Jose Francisco Ruiz (28 Sep 1994). He was imprisoned in Almaloya prison, Mexico’s highest-security facility. In 1998 Raul Salinas was acquitted of money laundering but remained in jail on murder and illegal-enrichment charges

1996 - A Rússia é admitida como membro do Conselho da Europa.

1996 - Daniel Chipenda dies at 64. Angolan politician.

1996 - 38th Grammy Awards: Alannis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill won best rock album and album of the year; Seal’s "Kiss from a Rose" won for record and song of the year.

2004 - Daniel J. Boorstin dies (b. 1914). American historian writer, and Librarian of Congress. His work includes The Americans trilogy: "The Colonial Experience" (1959), "The National Experience" (1966), and "The Democratic Experience" (1973).

272 - Constantine I was born (d. 0337). Roman emperor who was the first Roman emperor to profess Christianity, sparked the empire's evolution into a Christian state and catalyzed a distinctively Christian culture.

0425 - Theodosius effectively founded a university in Constantinople.

0837 - 15th recorded perihelion passage of Halley's Comet.

1500 - D. João de Castro was born in Lisbon (d. in Goa, 6 Jun 1548). Portuguese scientist, general and Vice-King of Índia.

1869 - Henry Chandler Cowles was born (d. 12 Sep 1939). American botanist who was a pioneer in the field of plant ecology, especially the concept of ecological succession which he devised through a study of sand dune vegation he made in the 1890's .

1869 - Alice Hamilton was born (d. 22 Sep 1970). American pathologist, known for her research on industrial diseases. By actively publicizing the danger to workers' health of industrial toxic substances, she contributed to the passage of workmen's compensation laws and to the development of safer working conditions.

1891 - David Sarnoff was born (d. 12 Dec 1971). American pioneer in the development of both radio and television broadcasting. He was the first general manager of RCA and founded the television network NBC (1926).

1891 - Anne Samson was born (d. 2004). Oldest-known Canadian 2002-2004 and oldest nun on record 2003-2004.

1897 - Bernard (-Ferdinand) Lyot was born (d. 2 Apr 1952). French astronomer who invented the coronagraph (1930), an instrument which allows the observation of the solar corona when the Sun is not in eclipse and other instruments used to study the Sun's corona.

1899 - Charles Best was born (d. 31 Mar 1978). American physiologist who, with Sir Frederick Banting, was the first to obtain (1921) a pancreatic extract of insulin in a form that controlled diabetes in dogs. The successful use of insulin in treating human patients followed. But because Best did not receive his medical degree until 1925, he did not share the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine awarded to Banting and J.J.R. Macleod in 1923 for their role in the work.

1902 - John Steinbeck was born in Salinas, California (d.1968). He is probably best remembered for his strong sociological novel The Grapes of Wrath, considered writer, winner of the Nobel Prize in literature 1962.

1902 - Gene Sarazen was born in Harrison, New York (d.1999). PGA golfer (Masters 1935, US Open 1922, 32).

1904 - Yulii Borisovich Khariton was born (d. 19 Dec 1996). Russian physicist who played a key role in the development of the Soviet Union's nuclear weapons and nuclear physics research. Khariton began his career as a researcher in chemical physics, studying combustion and explosion effects.

1910 - Kelly Johnson was born (d. 21 Dec 1990). American aeronautical engineer who introduced innovative designs. While managing Lockheed's secret project division, known as the "Skunk Works," he contributed to more than 40 airplanes.

1926 - David Hunter Hubel was born. Canadian-born American neurobiologist, who was a corecipient (with Torsten Nils Wiesel and Roger Wolcott Sperry) of the 1981 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for mapping the path of nerve impulses from the eye to various centres of the brain.

1936 - Ivan Pavlov dies (b. 14 Sep 1849). Russian physiologist known chiefly for his development of the concept of the conditioned reflex. In a now-classic experiment, he trained a hungry dog to salivate at the sound of a bell, which was previously associated with the sight of food. He received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1904.

1962 - South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem was unharmed as two planes bombed the presidential palace in Saigon. The 1st US national was killed. Although Diem had shortcomings as a leader, he had led South Vietnam for eight years and at the time of his death was attempting to deal with Buddhist factionalism.

1980 - Winners at the Grammy Awards: song of the year, What A Fool Believes, Streisand - Diamond duet, The Doobie Brothers, album of the year, Billy Joel's 52nd St, best new artist, Rickie Lee Jones, best disco record, I Will Survive by Gloria Gaynor.

1991 - In California Jim Mitchell shot and killed his brother Artie Mitchell at Artie’s home in Corte Madera. The brothers had produced pornographic films and operated a number of pornographic theaters that included the O’Farrell Theater in SF. He was found guilty of voluntary manslaughter and sentenced to 6 years in prison. He was released on parole in 1997.

1996 - A Sudanese military plane crashed 25 miles south of Khartoum and killed 91 people on board. The plane was a US made C-130.

1997 - Kingsley Davis dies (b. 20 Aug 1908). American sociologist and demographer who was a world-renowned expert on population trends. He had coined the term "zero population growth" and he was the first sociologist to be named to the National Academy of Sciences.

1997 - William Ross Maples dies (b. 7 Aug 1937). American forensic anthropologist who examined and identified the skeletons of a number of historical figures, including Tsar Nicholas II and other members of the Romanov family killed in 1918 by the Bolsheviks, Vietnam MIAs, conquistador Francisco Pizarro, and in 1994 helped convict Byron De La Beckwith of the 1963 murder of civil rights leader Medgar Evers.

1997 - The divorce is legalized in Ireland.

1998 - Os EUA encerram o embargo de 35 anos contra a África do Sul.

1998 - George H. Hitchings dies (b. 18 Apr 1905). American pharmacologist who was a medical research pioneer who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1988 for the development of drugs that became essential in the treatment of several major diseases. He shared the prize with colleague Gertrude B. Elion and with Sir James W. Black.

1999 - Brazilian poet Haraldo de Campos (b.1929) won the Mexican Octavio Paz Prize for poetry and essay writing. His major works include "Chess Game of the Stars" and "The Education of the Five Senses."

1999 - Rev. Henry J. Lyons, president of the National Baptist Convention USA, was convicted in Largo, Florida, of racketeering, grand theft and swindling millions of dollars from companies seeking to do business with his followers. He announced his resignation Mar 15. Lyons was sentenced to 5 ½ years in prison and ordered to repay almost $2.5 million.

1999 - From Niger it was reported that a mass grave containing 149 old men, women and children had been found in eastern Niger. The victims were Toubou refugees displaced by fighting several years ago.

1999 - In Nigeria Presidential elections were held. Nigerians voted to elect Olusegun Obasanjo their new president as the country marked the final phase of its return to democracy. Also it was reported that some 1,200 soldiers had died in fighting the rebels of the Revolutionary United Front in Sierra Leone.

2000 - In Iceland the Mount Hekla volcano erupted.

2000 - In Tijuana municipal police chief Alfredo de la Torre Marquez (49) was shot to death by assassins who sprayed his car with over 100 bullets.

2002 - 2002 Gujarat violence: a train catches fire a few minutes after it leaves the Godhra railway station, killing an estimated 58 Hindu pilgrims returning from Ayodhya and triggering riots that lead to the death of 1000 people, mostly Muslims.

2002 - Alicia Keys won in 5 categories at the 44th annual Grammy Awards. Train won for best rock song: "Drops of Jupiter," U2 won for best record of the year: "Walk On," and Various Artists won the album of the year: "O Brother, Where Art Thou."